My professional game design journey, so far.
Creative Lead
Bungie, Inc., 2024-Present
Starting with the Rite of the Nine event and continuing through to unannounced projects, I have been the creative lead for multidisciplinary teams, responsible for ensuring that the content we ship meets our standards for quality and adheres to a creative vision, both for the feature and for the game as a whole..
Rewards Sandbox Lead
Bungie, Inc., 2020-2024
After several years working alongside some of the most talented sandbox designers in the games industry, I took on the role of the Sandbox Design Lead for the Rewards area of Destiny 2. During this time, I was responsible for setting the vision for the evolution of Destiny 2’s player sandbox involving weapons and armor, ensuring that the quality of what we shipped met the Bungie best-in-class sandbox quality bar, managing team leads for both the Weapons & Accessories and Armor & Expressions teams, and driving the creative vision for new sandbox features and buildcrafting systems evolutions.
Senior Designer, Activities
Bungie, Inc., 2015-2018
Upon first joining the team at Bungie, I learned the activity design discipline, creating the missions that Destiny players would play through and cultivating level design and enemy placement/scripting skills. The first team I was on, the newly-created Worlds team, was responsible for the new take on the patrol activity in Destiny 2 as well as the creation of a new activity type: Adventures. After shipping nearly two dozen missions, I moved onto the Tools and Engine development team as a consulting designer to help create the next generation of activity design tools.
Board Game Design Lead
Wizards of the Coast, 2011-2012
While working as a D&D developer, through a series of fortunate events I worked alongside co-designer Peter Lee to create Lords of Waterdeep. After getting this unscheduled game published, I led a team of designers in the creation of several additional D&D board games, including managing several team members.
Star Wars Design Lead
Wizards of the Coast, 2007-2010
In 2006, I was contracted to help design the core rulebook for a new edition of the Star Wars Roleplaying Game that would eventually come to be called Saga Edition. Following completion of the core rules, I was hired by Wizards of the Coast to run the Star Wars RPG product line full-time, prompting my move to Seattle. During these years, I set the creative vision for the product line, managed the teams of freelance designers that created the subsequent books, led the mechanical design of each supplement, liaised with Lucasfilm Ltd. to ensure accuracy and quality of our content, and shepherded every supplementary sourcebook through the editing and production process.
Staff Designer, Sandbox
Bungie, Inc., 2018-2019
I was fortunate to have the opportunity to join Destiny’s sandbox design team, an industry-leading team of some of the most talented designers I have ever worked with. Though changing design disciplines was a challenge (and one that required me to learn both the sandbox design as well as the investment design disciplines), I spent several years not only designing sandbox atoms for Destiny players to enjoy but also revamping sandbox systems (such as the armor mod system) to create a deeper buildcrafting experience that saw skyrocketing engagement with our sandbox systems and spurred a wave of content creator discourse that continues to this day.
Senior Designer
Wizards of the Coast, 2012-2015
As D&D 4th Edition’s lifespan drew to a close, I had the opportunity to do something that tabletop roleplaying game designers dream of: design a new edition of D&D. Throughout the development of the 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons, I took on a leadership role and designed core systems and content for the new edition of the game. I was one of fewer than five people to be involved in the design of 5th Edition D&D from the very beginning of the project until the game shipped in 2014 and also was a public-facing member of the design team, writing regular articles, giving seminars and interviews, and appearing on livestreams to talk about the game and its ongoing development.
Designer/Developer
Wizards of the Coast, 2010-2011
When the Star Wars license ended in 2010, I moved over to the Dungeons & Dragons team as a developer, taking the initial mechanical design in D&D 4th Edition sourcebooks and refining them to be as sound as possible. As I gained experience working on these mechanics, I occasionally stepped into the role of designer for a number of D&D books, eventually leading the design for several books late in 4th Edition’s lifespan.
Freelance Designer
Independent, 2000-2006
Starting while I was still a college student and continue through my graduation from the University of Tennessee, I worked as a freelance game designer for companies such as Wizards of the Coast, Paizo Publishing, and Green Ronin Publishing, among others. These years helped me hone my writing and game design skills and taught me valuable lessons about being a good team member and hitting deadlines while still producing quality turnovers.
Senior Design Lead
Bungie, Inc., 2022-2024
Thanks to my multidisciplinary skills, I have been able to smoothly move between different features, contributing both as a team lead as well as an individual contributor making content. The most recent example of this is the Solo Ops activity type, on which I was the feature lead, creative vision holder, and a designer producing actual mission content that shipped alongside Edge of Fate.
Armor Team Lead
Bungie, Inc., 2019-2020
Taking over the role of feature lead for the Armor & Expressions team, I continued to act as an individual contributor producing new exotic armors and armor mod content. I also mentored more junior sandbox designers, continued to push for innovation in the buildcrafting space, and acted as a thought leader among the sandbox design team.
